Don't Look Or He Takes You
by ZephyrDarksnake
Summary: Zack and Cloud have been living together in a small home packed away in the peaceful country side, surrounded by forest as far as the eye could see. One day Cloud hears what sounds like a child lost in the woods and sets off to help him. Several hours later Zack gets a chilling phone call about a strange creature that has... no face. AU Established Relationship. Based on a prompt


**UPDATE:**

**After I decided to head off to bed, I did as I normally do and checked the Clack archive on my 3DS before bed. Seeing that this was finally published I decided to read it for shits and giggles and actually noticed quite a few errors when I got to the last bit of the drabble and also that my dividers were gone. It wasn't anything super huge but being the worry wart that I am I had to pry myself out of my comfy bed to pop back on my computer and fix the errors that I seen before I would ever be able to coax myself to sleep O.O**

**A/N:**  
**First off, I'm horribly new to writing, especially fanfics. I've had some slight experience in attempting to write short novels but I'm what you could call an "awkward writer" and just feel so_ blah_ with everything I write and usually give up on it. With that said this will obviously be my first fanfiction I've ever written therefor it will likely suck, but please bear with me. Normally I wouldn't even try to write a fic for the above mentioned reasons but I've been thinking about making a profile here on FF for a while now and figured I would need to put SOMETHING on it, plus I recently stumbled upon a prompt that I thought would make for a pretty cool story. As of now this will probably just be a oneshot, no lemons or anything, just a bit of fluff and implied established relationship. Also slightly AU just so that it's possible for Slenderman to exist on Gaia.**

**Based on the prompt: Horror Prompt: Have one of your characters meet Slenderman.  
**

He was starting to get a little worried. Zack was now sitting in the large black leather recliner he had claimed as his staring at the watch adorning his wrist. It was now nearing two hours since his beloved Cloud had gone off into the forest surrounding the small home they shared to investigate a noise he heard that sounded like a small child lost among the maze of trees. Zack had insisted that he accompany the blonde, but Cloud simply pushed his boyfriend back into the house and told him he would only be a minute and that he needn't worry. The sun was now just barely visible over the horizon and it would soon be dark. In his mind Zack cursed himself for not following the blonde anyway, what if he wandered a little too far into the woods and had somehow gotten himself lost as well? The raven haired man was just pulling his sweater on over his head when he heard the ringing of his phone. Dashing across the kitchen and to the counter top where his phone lay on charge, he breathed a sigh of relief when he read the familiar name glowing on the small screen.

"Hey Spikey, where the hell have you been?" he cooed in a playful tone attempting to hide the worry he had felt. That worry came flooding back when he heard his boyfriend choke, nearly in tears. "Zack! Oh Gods Zack you've gotta help me!" the blonde cried, his voice laced with fear that made Zack's heart sink into the pit of his stomach. "Cloud? Hey, what's going on buddy? Where are you!?" he coaxed, trying to calm his frightened lover while fighting to keep his own composure. "There's something out here Zack! It... It had no _face_!" Cloud screamed, so loud that Zack almost couldn't make it out over the phone. The raven's forehead was now dripping with sweat. It didn't have... A face? What in the name of Gaia was Cloud talking about? "Cloud, calm down babe. I need you to tell me where you are" he spoke with a clear but gentle tone in an attempt to slightly quell the blonde's shot nerves. There was an eerie silence on the line that made Zack sweat even harder until the silence was broken by Cloud's shaky voice. "...There's an old brick building back in these woods. The whole place is fenced off but... But I thought I heard that kid in here so I climbed over the fence". The line was suddenly disrupted by a small bit of static that began to grow louder, as if something that was interfering with the signal was moving closer. "Oh Gods no... Shit!" he heard his lover begin to cry again. As the static grew to an almost deafening volume, Zack could just barely make out the sound of Cloud's terror-filled scream as the line suddenly went dead. "Cloud? Cloud!" he cried, but was met only with silence. "Aw, shit!" the raven hissed as he buried his fists into his long black spikes. He grabbed the flashlight perched on the top of the fridge and was out the door in a fraction of a second.

ZC~***~***~***~ZC

After wandering the darkened woods for about 40 minutes and several failed attempts to call Cloud's phone, the raven finally stumbled upon the fence his lover had mentioned. Without a second thought he vaulted himself over the fence and headed off to find the brick building that Cloud had also mentioned. All sorts of thoughts were running through his head, like where was Cloud? Was he okay? And what could he have possibly seen that... didn't have a face? It was with that thought that Zack once again mentally kicked himself for not thinking to bring his sword, or _any_ kind of weapon for that matter. He would just have to pray to whichever God would listen that he could find Cloud and get the hell out of here without the need to use one. While stumbling through the darkness still searching for the building, Zack noticed something stuck to a nearby tree. He walked over the the strange object to find that it was a piece of paper. Drawn on it was an image of a tall man in a black suit with impossibly long arms that nearly reached as low as his feet. The thing that stood out the most about the drawing was the lack of a face... "Did Cloud do this?" Zack asked himself. He flipped the paper over to find a message scrawled messily onto the other side that read "**_DON'T LOOK OR HE TAKES YOU_**". Irked by the strange message, Zack stuffed the paper into his pocket and pressed on in search of his lover. He suddenly felt a cold shiver run down his spine, a feeling like someone was watching him and as he flashed around the bright light in his hand it landed on the brick building he was looking for. He stuck his head in through the open door and peered around the strange place. The whole building was completely empty, the walls and floor made of some weird white tiles. The raven couldn't help but think that it looked like a hospital, or a school or something. Wandering down the long narrow halls he discovered that the building was littered with small rooms consisting of the same tiled walls and the same emptiness. Until he came to one.

He followed a small trail of blood to a small room near the back of the building, looking through the door he noticed that unlike the other rooms that were completely empty, this one contained only one chair. And in that chair was something that made his heart race. Sitting on the small metal folding chair was Cloud, blood dripping from the top of his head and from one side just below his ribs. He was unconscious, but still in one piece nonetheless. He approached his lover carefully with an ever growing fear of what he might find once he got closer. Placing two of his fingers on the side of Cloud's neck, he almost fell over from the wave of relief that hit him when he felt his lover's pulse. He shook the blonde violently trying everything he could to wake him. After slapping his hands against his cheeks and repeatedly calling his lover's name, Cloud finally woke. "Oh thank Gods! Cloud, are you alright babe?" the raven cried with his hands on Cloud's shoulders, now nearly in tears himself. Too exhausted to actually speak, Cloud opted to nod his head instead, a mistake he regretted when the room began to spin. Happy that his lover was alive, Zack pulled the blonde into a bone crushing hug. "Let's get the hell out of here Spike" the raven sang as he picked up his lover bridal style, mindful of the still bleeding wound in his side. Taking only one step out the door Zack nearly dropped Cloud from the shock of what he seen standing before him. Across the other end of the hall stood the creature that was drawn on the piece of paper, the same one Cloud described over the phone hours before. Tall, slender, those impossibly long arms that seemed to writhe like severed tentacles. And the pure white, expressionless face that even with the lack of eyes stared daggers of pure fear into the raven's very soul. "Oh my Gods..." Zack just barely whispered, knees beginning to buckle from the fear that was now pressing down on his shoulders. His mind too scared to react, his body decided to act on it's own, tearing through the hallways of the labyrinth-like building. As he rounded each corner he was met almost every single time with the same sight. The slender man was waiting around every corner with the blank face and the tentacle like arms that seemed to double every time Zack saw it. He ran on and on, playing cat and mouse with the slender man for what seemed like days until he finally came to the exit of the labyrinth. Running as fast as his shaking body could carry him, ducking between trees and the slender man himself every so often, Zack finally made it to the edge of the fence. Waking Cloud once again, Zack asked the blonde if he would be able to climb the fence. Nodding once more, Zack placed Cloud on his shoulders so that the blonde could reach the top of the fence a little easier. Pulling himself up and over, Cloud fell to the ground on the other side. When Cloud was down from the top of the fence Zack lunged with all of his strength to catch the top, but when he tried to pull himself over the fence and into freedom he couldn't help but scream when he felt something grab his ankle. Not even wanting to look back and see what it was, he violently thrashed his leg trying to break free of whatever had him, tearing the skin on his stomach a little on the surface of the chain link fence. After fighting and kicking for a while longer, whatever was holding him back lost it's grip as Zack's boot came right off of his foot. Seeing his chance to escape he hauled himself over the fence, not even caring about the now bleeding wounds on his stomach.

ZC~***~***~***~ZC

Three months later the young couple had just finished packing the last of their things onto the moving van. Sharing one last kiss in the home that they loved so much, they traced the scars on their skin and were reminded of the reason they had to leave. As much as they loved this house, Zack knew that Cloud would never be able to sleep again knowing something so horrible was lurking in the woods so close by. He was going to miss this place, but the new home they were on their way to claim was guaranteed to be 100 percent free of slender men and creepy monsters. This new house might not be quite the same, but at least he would still have his black leather recliner.

**A/N:**  
**Well, what did you think? Somewhat tolerable or completely horrible? I thought it would be humorous to stick the bit about Zack's recliner in at the end, reading it now it just kinda sounds weird. I also couldn't decide whether I wanted to have Slenderman kill them or not, I know that normally anyone faced with Slenderman is never seen again but I just couldn't bring myself to kill off the little puppy and chocobo :3 Normally I would be kicking myself for all of the mistakes and the lack of descriptive detail that this story has, but since this IS my first ever fanfic I'm willing to let myself off this time. I've read far worse than this and all-in-all it's actually not that bad. In my opinion the beginning reads alright, but about halfway through and then right to the end seems really rushed and just "blah". Not to mention the fact that this has probably been done a million times already and probably isn't all that creative. I'm rolling around some ideas in my head for a multi-chapter fic as well. I've got several different ideas and several different pairings in mind but I'm not quite sure which to go with as of yet, if I even write one anyway. When showing this to a friend of mine before posting it here I was also told that I could do sort of a sister fic to this one only based on my favorite creepypasta instead of Slenderman. Not sure which is my favourite though so that's also tough, haha! Anywho, review this if you want, being my first story and not a very good one at that I wont mind if this doesn't actually get that much attention. This was written at 3:00am so there are obviously going to be problems with it, feel free to flame it if you wish as well.**

**Time will tell if I write another fic or not, so until then~**

**Zephyr**


End file.
